By stewartb

‘STV is becoming as anti-Scottish as BBC Scotland’ – as evidenced by its practice of context and perspective-free reporting. It would be so easy and quick for STV better to inform its audience – and voters – but that would require different journalistic/editorial objectives.

To further fill the void in STV’s reporting, what follows is from the Office of Road and Rail (7 March 2023) ‘Passenger rail performance, 1 October to 31 December 2023’.

(https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/jkfh21zr/performance-stats-release-oct-dec-2023.pdf )

1. Trains planned by operator, October to December 2023, and percentage change compared with October to December 2022 (Table 3123)

Scotrail – 11.8 percentage point increase on same period in 2022. Just seven out of 24 operators had a larger increase.

2. On Time by operator, October to December 2023 and percentage point (pp) change compared with October to December 2022 (Table 3133)

Scotrail – 62.9% up 0.5% on same period in 2022. Just seven out of 24 operators had a better performance.

3. Reliability: cancellations score by operator, October to December 2023 and percentage point (pp) change compared with October to December 2022 (Table 3123)

Scotrail – cancellation score is 3.3%, 1.5 percentage points better than the same period in 2022. Just three out of 24 operators had a better performance.

Some operators have reported they use the practice of “P-coding” for resource availability shortage pre-cancellations. Pre-cancelled trains are removed from the timetable before it is finalised at 22:00 the previous evening and therefore may not be appearing in operators’ Cancellations scores. Seventeen operators reported the use of “P– coded” pre-cancellations in the latest quarter, including Scotrail.

4. Official Cancellations score and “P*- coded” adjusted Cancellations score,

Scotrail – 3.2% ‘official’ and 3.5% ‘P*- coded” adjusted’. On the latter, Scotrail is second best performer of the 17 operators.

So no, Scotrail is not the top performer but only in Scotland would a service performing so well relative to its peers be the target of headline negativity.

Context and perspective-free news reporting of topics with a political dimension is necessary in – a natural consequence of -political agenda-driven reporting.